Should I stay here or go back home?

Why can I not simply decide?

Because you are not weighing 2 countries. You are weighing 2 versions of yourself, and both of them are real.

Most people arrive at this question having already made a list. Salary here, family there. Winter here, friends there. The list balances, or very nearly, and the balancing is the problem: a list cannot tell you which losses you can live with, and that is the actual question underneath.

There is also something uncomfortable to notice. The pull in each direction is not steady. On a Tuesday in February, when the light has gone by half past three and a conversation at work went slightly wrong, going home feels obvious. In June, with people in the parks and the summer ahead, the same question looks absurd. Neither mood is lying to you. Each is telling you something true about one part of your life, and neither has the authority to decide for the rest of it.

What is the pull home actually asking for?

Usually for something specific, which is worth finding before you move a life to get it.

When I ask people to describe going home, they rarely describe a country. They describe being understood without effort, or being near a parent who is getting older, or a kind of ease they remember and cannot find here. Those are different wishes with different solutions, and only some of them are solved by a flight.

• Missing particular people. This one does travel. Proximity to specific people is something a move genuinely delivers.
• Missing being known. Harder, because what you are missing is accumulated history, and a new address does not restore the years you were away.
• Missing an earlier self. The person you were before the move, with that energy and those possibilities. Moving back does not return you to them.
• Wanting an exit. Sometimes the wish to leave the country is really a wish to leave a job, a relationship or a stuck year, with the country standing in for it.

I want to be careful here. Separating these is useful, and it is not a test that produces an answer. Several can be true at once, and a person can miss their mother and want to leave their job in the same breath, with both reasons perfectly good.

Does going back settle it?

For some people, clearly yes. For others the question travels with them, and it is worth knowing that before you pack.

In a survey of 740 people who had returned to Poland or Lithuania after living in the UK, those who said they had come back because they missed home were markedly less likely to be planning another move abroad than those who returned for other reasons, and having work and having children were the strongest factors against moving again¹. The sample recruited itself online and was weighted towards women and graduates, so it describes a tendency rather than a rule. Still, the shape of it matches what I see: when the reason for going back is the pull itself, going back tends to answer it. When the reason is escape from something, the restlessness often reappears in the old country wearing different clothes.

A review drawing on those studies and on repeated interviews with Polish migrants in Britain describes what makes people stay or go in terms of anchors: a home, work that means something, ties in the neighbourhood. People with several of those tended to stay, or to wait and see, while people whose footing was thinner moved more readily; the same work found that homesickness before returning went with settling back in more easily afterwards². It is a conceptual paper rather than a study of its own, so take it as a way of looking rather than a measurement.

What I take from this clinically is simple. The question is less “which country” and more “what am I actually anchored to, in either place, and what would I be building rather than fleeing.”

How much should I trust what I feel right now?

More than you probably think, and less than you fear.

People in this position often dismiss their own feeling as a mood. One large Swiss study followed up what people had said in 2016 against where they actually were at the end of 2018: roughly 96 in 100 of those who intended to stay had stayed, and around 7 in 10 of those who intended to leave had gone³. The people surveyed were mostly well qualified and the follow-up was only 2 years, so it is not the last word. But it does suggest that a settled intention is not idle talk. It usually knows something.

The same study found that practical circumstances, work, a partner, children, mattered more to what people actually did than to what they said they wanted. That gap is worth sitting with rather than resolving. The wish and the life it has to fit into are 2 different things, and a decision that ignores either one tends not to hold.

What helps you decide, and when is deciding not the problem?

Treat staying as an active choice, at least for a defined period, and see what that does to the question. Most of the suffering here comes from feeling held in a place by inertia.

• Separate the wishes. Write down what you are actually missing, in concrete terms, and ask of each one whether a move would deliver it.
• Notice when the question gets loud. If it only arrives in dark months or after conflict, that is information about the trigger, not an answer about the country.
• Choose a horizon, not an ultimatum. Deciding to stay until a particular point, and to look again then, converts a permanent ache into something with edges.
• Talk to someone who has gone back. Not for a verdict, but for a more accurate picture of what the first year at home actually involved.

There are situations where none of this is the right work. If you and a partner want different things, this is not a decision you can reach on your own, and trying to settle it privately usually makes it worse. If the heaviness is present no matter where you imagine yourself, a move is unlikely to touch it and the flatness deserves attention in its own right. And if you are being asked to decide on someone else’s timetable, by a job or a visa or a family expectation, then the real difficulty is the pressure, not the choice.

I will not pretend the answer is available from the outside. What I can say is that people usually know more than they can currently reach, and that the not knowing is often protecting something they have not yet been willing to say out loud. That is the piece worth exploring, and it is slower work than a list.

Questions people ask

Can therapy tell me whether to stay or go?

No, and I would not trust a therapist who offered to. What it can do is make the question clear enough that your own answer becomes reachable.

Should we come as a couple if we disagree about it?

Yes, when the decision belongs to both of you, working on it together is usually more useful than working on it apart. Each of you can still have individual sessions if that would help.

Is it worth starting if I might leave in a few months?

Yes, and a short, clearly bounded piece of work can suit this question well. Knowing there is an end point often sharpens what gets talked about rather than limiting it.

What if I have already decided and still feel awful?

That is common, and it usually means the decision is settled but the loss inside it has not been faced. Choosing one life always involves putting down another, and that part deserves its own attention.

How do I know if I need therapy or just a good conversation?

If you have had the good conversations and the question has not moved, that is usually the sign. A free 30-minute call is a reasonable way to find out which you need.

If you are weighing whether to stay or return, I help people make that choice calmly in repatriation psychotherapy.

Sources

1. Between settlement, double return and re-emigration: motivations for future mobility of Polish and Lithuanian return migrants. Comparative Migration Studies, 2023.
2. Return migration and embedding: through the lens of Brexit as an unsettling event. Comparative Migration Studies, 2024.
3. Can migrants’ emigration intentions predict their actual behaviors? Evidence from a Swiss survey. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2021.

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.